Precocious mental attainments are frequently as destructive of life as a rapid growth. The wonderful Baratier, at the age of four, spoke and read Latin, French, and German; was an excellent Greek scholar at six; and when ten years of age, translated the Scriptures from the Hebrew; at nineteen he died of exhaustion. The vulgar saying, "The child is too clever to live," is founded upon observation. These early specimens of superior intellect are sometimes followed by a state of imbecility. Antiochus tells us that Hermogenes, who was a celebrated rhetorician at fourteen years, was ignorant in the extreme at twenty-four; and of him it was said, In pueritia senex, in senectute puer. Tall men generally produce children of high stature. The celebrated grenadier guards of Frederick William, in the words of Dr. Johnson, "_propagated procerity_;" and the inhabitants of Potsdam are remarkable for their height. Haller states that his own family were distinguished by their tallness, without excepting one single grandchild, although they were very numerous. In the hereditary transmission of physical and moral qualities, many curious observations have been made. Women of high mental attainments have been known to produce children of genius, more frequently than men of a superior intellect; although Haller relates the singular case of two noble females who married wealthy idiots on account of their fortunes, and from whom this melancholy defect had extended for a century into several families, so that some of all their descendants still continued idiots in the fourth and fifth generation. Horace had observed this tendency to produce offsprings resembling their parents, Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis: Est in juvencis, est in equis patrum Virtus: nec imbellem feroces Progenerant aquilae columbam.